Category Archives: nasa

NASA Invites Social Media Users to Attend Rocket Launch

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NASA is inviting social media users to apply for credentials to attend the launch of the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, aboard United Launch Alliance’s Delta II rocket. The rocket will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California. The target date is no earlier than September 12, 2018.

Attendees at NASA’s ICESat -2 Launch Social at Vandenberg will have the chance to post, blog, tweet, Instagram, snap and more to engage their followers on social media. A maximum of 50 social media users will be selected to attend, and will be given access to similar news media.

NASA Social participants will have the opportunity to:

  • Participate in a special televised pre-launch briefing
  • Witness the last launch of the Delta II rocket
  • Speak with ICESat-2 mission scientists and engineers
  • View and take photographs of the Delta II rocket on the launch pad
  • Tour facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base
  • Interact with NASA social media managers and fellow space & Earth science enthusiasts

Those who are interested can register on the NASA website. Registration opened on July 6, 2018, and will close at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Sunday, July 22, 2018. You must have a social media account to register.

You must be a U.S. citizen to attend the event. To be admitted to the event, you must provide a form of unexpired government-issued identification. It must be a photo ID and match the name provided on the registration. Visit the NASA website for more information.

LEGO will Produce Women of NASA Project

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LEGO announced their Second 2016 Review Results. They reviewed 12 projects that each reached 10,000 supporters between May and September of 2016. One of the winners is the Women of NASA project.

The Women of NASA project was created by Maia Weinstock, who is a science editor and writer, with a strong personal interest in space exploration as well as the history of women in science and engineering. Maia Weinstock explained the reasoning for the Women of NASA set this way:

Women have played critical roles throughout the history of the U.S. Space program, a.k.a. NASA or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Yet in may cases, their contributions are unknown or under-appreciated – especially as women have historically struggled to gain acceptance in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

The Women of NASA set includes five LEGO minifigures – each representing a notable NASA pioneer. The women represented are:

  • Margaret Hamilton – Computer scientist who developed the on-board flight software for the Apollo missions to the moon.
  • Katherine Johnson – Mathematician and space scientist known for calculating and verifying trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo programs – including the Apollo 11 mission that first landed humans on the moon.
  • Sally Ride – Astronaut, physicist and educator who became the first American woman in space in 1983.
  • Nancy Grace Roman – Astronomer who was one of the first female executives at NASA. She is called the “Mother of Hubble” for her role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope.
  • Mae Jemison – Astronaut, physician, and entrepreneur who became the first African-American women in space in 1992.

LEGO is still working out the final product design, pricing and availability for the Women of NASA set. They recommend you check back on the LEGO Ideas blog in late 2017 or early 2018 for more details.

Curiosity Rover Got a Mission Extension

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bigstock_Kennedy_Space_Center_nasa__4064149NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is in the process of being returned to full activity after undergoing a precautionary stand-down during the July 4th weekend. Its mission has been extended.

The rover put itself into safe mode on July 2, 2016, and engineers are working to determine what caused it to do that. While in safe mode, the rover ceased most of its activities, with the exception of keeping itself healthy and following a prescribed sequence for resuming communications.

The engineers have determined, based on preliminary information, that an unexpected mismatch between the rover’s camera software and data-processing software in the main computer, could potentially be the reason why the rover went into safe mode.

The Curiosity Mars Rover was launched on November 6, 2011. It landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, and is still there. The goal of its mission is to determine if Mars was ever able to support microbial life.

NASA has approved an additional two-year extension of the Curiosity rover’s mission. That mission will begin on October 1, 2016. The Mars Science Laboratory developed and operates Curiosity. That team will be working on the near-term steps towards having Curiosity resume full activities, which begins with a request for more diagnostic information from the rover.

Google Created “Juno Reaches Jupiter!” Doodle

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Google Doodle Juno Reaches JupiterMission Juno was launched on August 5, 2011. It arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Google created a special Google Doodle about it called “Juno reaches Jupiter!”  Not all Google Doodles are animated, but this one is.

https://youtu.be/0DGQi-Yngew

The Juno spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida about five years ago. The principal goal of Mission Juno is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter.

Some of the things Juno will do include:
* Investigate the existence of a solid planetary core
* Map Jupiter’s intense magnetic field
* Measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere
* Observe Jupiter’s auroras

Juno reached Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Over the next few months, Juno’s mission and science teams will perform final testing on the spacecraft’s subsystems, final calibration of science instruments, and some science collection. Their official science collection phase will begin in October.

NASA released a video of Juno’s approach to Jupiter:

The Juno spacecraft also carries three Lego minifigs. One represents the Roman god Jupiter, who holds a lightning bolt. Another represents Juno, (Jupiter’s wife). She is holding a magnifying glass as a sign for searching for truth. The third minifig represents Galileo Galliei, who holds a telescope. Each of these three special Lego minifigs is made out of aluminum (which can endure the extreme conditions of space).

NASA Captures Dramatic Supersonic Images

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NASA planeSupersonic (traveling faster than the speed of sound) flight has been possible for about 70 years. The auditory results of cracking the sound barrier are sometimes heard (and felt) in the form of sonic booms. But what does it look like when an object reaches Mach 1? Often, aircraft are photographed with a visible plume of moisture erupting around them when they reach supersonic speeds. But that’s just part of the picture, as NASA observed with a recent photographic experiment.

NASA used an unlikely process to capture images of supersonic shockwaves created by an Air Force T-38C test plane. Researchers employed a 150-year old technique called schlieren photography. Wikipedia describes this style of photography as:

…a visual process that is used to photograph the flow of fluids of varying density. Invented by the German physicist August Toepler in 1864 to study supersonic motion, it is widely used in aeronautical engineering to photograph the flow of air around objects.

Having access to plenty of modern technology and techniques, NASA used an updated version of this technique called background oriented schlieren (BOS):

First, researchers obtain an image of a speckled background pattern. Next, they collect a series of images of an object in supersonic flow in front of the same pattern. Shock waves are deduced from distortions of the background pattern resulting from the change in refractive index due to density gradients. This method requires very simple optics and a variety of background patterns, including natural ones, may be used. The complexity with this method is in the image processing and not the hardware or positioning, thus making BOS an attractive candidate for obtaining high-spatial-resolution imaging of shock waves in flight.

Detailed explanations of the project (and a few more images) are available at the link above.

Image credit: NASA

NASA is on Tumblr

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NASA logo on TumblrNASA has been branching out on social media. It has two verified Twitter accounts. One is @NASA and the other is for the International Space Station @Space_Station. You can also find Twitter accounts for several astronauts. NASA has recently created some Tumblr blogs.

The main NASA Tumblr blog is called NASA. It says “Explore the universe and discover our home planet with the official NASA Tumblr.” At the time I am writing this, the NASA Tumblr blog has a video about the first veggies grown, harvested, and eaten in space at the top of its blog.

There is also a Curiosity Rover Tumblr. The description says “Roving Mars for science. Blogging it for you. Official NASA mission Tumblr”. It has images taken by the Mars Rover (including a selfie). This Tumblr blog also has information about Mars and a link to the recent Curiosity Rover Reddit AMA.

NASA has a third Tumblr blog called Astronaut Peggy Whitson. It has photos and information about the NASA Village. The description says “It takes a NASA Village … to train an astronaut.” This Tumblr blog will follow Peggy Whitson as she trains for a six-month mission on the International Space Station.

What is “Remember the 13th”?

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Conspiracy theorists are running wild about a new web site that is purportedly from NASA. The web site in question is titled “NASA has made a historic discovery that will shake the entire planet. This announcement will be released to the media on November 13th, 2013. It will be a day to remember and One for the history books. Spread the word to your family & friends and sign up to stay updated! – See more at: Remember the 13th and sports a logo from the space agency along with a rather cryptic message.

“NASA has made a historic discovery that will shake the entire planet. This announcement will be released to the media on November 13th, 2013. It will be a day to remember and One for the history books. Spread the word to your family & friends and sign up to stay updated!”

There is also a countdown clock running on the site, currently at 41 days. Nothing more is revealed and there is nothing about the page which gives any sort of hints.

Its all very clever, but also likely a marketing ploy for something and not an actual NASA news conference. Other than the logo, which anyone can slap onto a website, there is nothing to suggest any of this is anything more than a clever marketing campaign for a product, movie or TV show.

I will leave the question up to all of you. What do you think this is? Legitimate news coming from the space agency? Has Curiosity discovered something? Or is it, as I am leaning towards, very good marketing hype?